More stories

  • in

    Liverpool-Manchester City: Rodri Is the Premier League’s Best Player

    Rodri’s genius is not in making things happen. He is employed by Manchester City, at least in part, to make sure they do not.Pep Guardiola would, in an unguarded moment, probably concede that he has a slight tendency toward hyperbole. With eyes wide and voice breathless, he will sing the praises of some hopelessly overmatched opponent his Manchester City team has just beaten by 6-1, his players’ jerseys untainted by sweat. “Guys,” he will say, “guys, they are so good. So, so good.”Where this reflex comes from is a matter of interpretation. The likeliest explanation is that it is just who Guardiola is: passionate and intense and deeply enthusiastic, still, about his sport. There might be just a dash of noblesse oblige in there, too, a little well-intentioned clemency from soccer’s great conqueror. And it is easy to wonder if Guardiola resents how much of his — and City’s — success is presented as an economic inevitability, and so feels the need to get his rebuttal in first.Whatever the truth, the effect is the same: At times, it can be difficult to be absolutely certain when Guardiola is being sincere and when he is indulging in some light lily-gilding.In the immediate aftermath of Sunday’s Manchester derby, for example, he suggested that Phil Foden might be the “best” player in the Premier League. It is by no means an outrageous claim. Foden, 24, has been outstanding for City this season, the finest campaign of his young career. He has sparkled in a suite of roles, and deserves a considerable portion of the credit for the fact that City did not particularly seem to miss Kevin De Bruyne while he was injured.But at the same time, there is a good chance that Guardiola was exaggerating, just a touch. Not because he does not appreciate Foden’s brilliance, but because he — more than anyone — should be aware that Foden is not even the best player on his team. The best player at Manchester City, and the best player in the Premier League, is Rodri.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • in

    Jürgen Klopp Dragged Liverpool Into the Future. Now He’ll Let It Go.

    A trophy-winning manager’s announcement that he will step down at the end of the season is a chance to take the measure of success.For Jürgen Klopp, the montages will be long and they will be emotional. There will, naturally, be artful drone shots of Liverpool’s skyline. There will be slow-motion footage of red-and-white scarves, twirling and writhing. There will, absolutely, be a stirring, possibly classical score.But most of all, in the wake of Klopp’s announcement on Friday that he will step down as Liverpool manager, there will be images of all the memories he made: the bus parades and the trophy lifts, the fist pumps and the bear hugs, the rich and wide iconography of glory.The chances are that when they come — and they will come, in great number, as Klopp’s last game at the club rolls around toward the end of May — they will not linger too long on the immediate aftermath of a 2-2 draw with West Bromwich Albion in 2015, a game that lifted Liverpool to the dizzying heights of ninth place in the Premier League.And yet, more than eight years later, that night has the feel both of a signpost of what was to come and an encapsulation of how it would be achieved. Klopp had been in charge of Liverpool for only a couple of months back then. In the piercing clarity of hindsight, though, that match looks an awful lot like the moment Liverpool became his club.Klopp with the player Jordon Ibe, Divock Origi and Roberto Firmino “celebrating” a draw with West Bromwich Albion at Anfield in 2015.Oli Scarff/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTo recap: A patchwork Liverpool team had required a late goal from Divock Origi — another leitmotif, there — to rescue a point at home to a West Brom squad battling relegation. At the end of the game, Klopp insisted his players link hands and walk over to the Kop, the soaring grandstand that is home to Liverpool’s most ardent fans, and thank them for their efforts.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

  • in

    Soccer Watchalongs Like Stretford Paddock Offer a Broadcast Alternative

    Soccer fans are tuning out broadcasts in favor of watchalongs: streaming parties where you hear what you want to hear and see everything except the game.With the lights adjusted and the cameras rolling, the production team gives Joe Smith his cue. In five seconds, he will be broadcasting live to a couple thousand people. Mr. Smith’s mind, though, is elsewhere. “Slate is definitely the best way to build a roof,” he mutters to his co-host, Jay Mottershead, as the countdown hits three. “All these years on, they haven’t topped it.”And with that, they are on air. They will remain so for the next four hours, essentially uninterrupted: a broadcasting endurance test staged in a subterranean studio, all exposed brick and industrial lighting, in the middle of Manchester’s achingly hip Northern Quarter.Before they have finished, they will have touched on subjects as diverse as: the slightly alarming frequency with which Mr. Mottershead has nightmares; the declining popularity of lemon curd; and the story of a man who attends Mr. Smith’s gym exclusively to read vintage copies of “Cars” magazine.Occasionally, their freewheeling, faintly anarchic conversation to be interrupted by what is supposedly the purpose of the evening’s activity: keeping track of the game between the soccer team they support, Manchester United, and the Danish champion, F.C. Copenhagen.That is, after all, what will attract more than 100,000 people to their livestream over the course of those four hours. It is the diversions and the tangents and the stream of consciousness about roofing, though, that will keep them there.Watchalongs like Stretford Paddock’s have become big business, with full-scale production crews and hundreds of thousands of subscribers.Rory Smith/The New York TimesHard-Core CommunityThe concept of watching two people watch a soccer game might sound like a distinctly postmodern form of entertainment, a close cousin of the gaming streams that proliferate on Twitch and the unboxing videos that for some reason captivate children on YouTube.In soccer, though, the form has deep roots. The idea of making most games available to watch on television, after all, is a relatively recent one. In Britain, home to the Premier League, many games continue to be blacked out, in the interest of protecting in-stadium attendances.Barred from showing those games, broadcasters have for years had little choice but to find creative ways to keep viewers up-to-date on what is taking place in them. Most have settled on the format pioneered by Sky’s “Soccer Saturday” — launched in the 1990s — in which an array of former players sit in a studio, watching feeds of the games only they can see, and update viewers on key moments in real time. (Think of the N.F.L.’s popular Red Zone channel, only without seeing anyone actually playing football.)A group reaction to a last-minute goal on Arsenal Fan TV in 2021 made a compilation of the watchalong’s greatest hits.The form of the show that Mr. Mottershead and Mr. Smith host on Stretford Paddock, the Manchester United fan channel they co-own — or its counterparts on outlets like The Redmen TV (Liverpool) and We Are Tottenham TV (self-explanatory) — is essentially the same. The function, though, is distinct.Most of their viewers, Mr. Mottershead said, are also watching the games, either legally or illegally. “They turn the commentary down and listen to us instead,” he said. They do so because they want a much more narrowly focused product: Stretford Paddock’s audience only wants updates on Manchester United, for example, not news about anyone else who is playing at the same time.And, crucially, they want those updates delivered not by the compromised and biased mouthpieces of the mainstream media — what they see as retirees protecting their friends and business interests, or commentators with the nebulous but definite prejudice against their club — but by dyed-in-the-wool fans like them. “We might disagree on things,” Mr. Mottershead said. “But we all want United to do well.”Still, after more than six years leading watchalongs with Mr. Smith, Mr. Mottershead has come to believe that what draws in fans is not simply a matter of having their obsessions met and their biases confirmed.What his viewers are looking for, he thinks, is simple. They want someone to watch the game with them.Viral EmpireThe part of the soccer industry that is made for fans and by fans is necessarily tribal. Every club essentially exists in its own silo. The biggest names in the Manchester United content universe will be largely alien to those who follow Liverpool, just as celebrated Arsenal podcasters will have little or no resonance to Tottenham supporters.The crowning exception is Mark Goldbridge, soccer’s 44-year-old livestream kingpin and the genre’s only real crossover star. It is not just that his fan channel, The United Stand, currently has 1.77 million YouTube subscribers. It is that almost every time Manchester United loses (or draws, or concedes a goal), he is liable to reach many millions more.Footage from Mr. Goldbridge’s streams reliably goes viral: rants that are by turns splenetic, wildly N.S.F.W., and vaguely surreal. He will howl that Manchester United’s defense has “all the resistance of a papadum catching a bowling ball,” say, or that the club is accidentally employing “a team of slow giraffes.”Quite what it is about Mr. Goldbridge that has made him so prominent is difficult to pinpoint, and he offered no clues: He declined through his representation to be interviewed for this article, on the grounds that he is currently exploring opportunities away from “the watchalong space.”In interviews, Mr. Goldbridge has accepted that there is an element of cringe comedy, in the style of David Brent or Alan Partridge, to his delivery. Peter McPartland, a host on Toffee TV, a channel dedicated to Everton, agreed. “There is an awkwardness to him that makes him funny,” he said.Channels like We Are Tottenham TV and others all emphasize their bona fides as fans, and can offer faraway fans a glimpse of the in-stadium atmosphere they might never experience in person.Whatever it is, it is undeniably effective. “He has built an empire,” said Paul Machin, a founder of The Redmen TV, the Liverpool fan channel. The problem is less his success, other hosts said, and more in the copycats he has inspired.“People see his videos going viral,” Mr. Machin said, “so now there are a lot of Manchester United watchalongs where people you’ve never seen before are kind of performing their anger.”The economics of the internet, in theory, incentivize virality. In an industry in which there is a direct correlation between clicks and revenue, going viral is held to be both the greatest prize and the ultimate purpose of all online content.Those who earn their living from fan channels, though, see that kind of attention less as a goal and more as a danger. “We don’t want that virality,” said Ben Daniel, who founded We Are Tottenham TV with his brother, Simon, in 2017.Clips that break tribal lines tend to do so by attracting a considerable proportion of “hate watches,” he said — views from fans of other clubs relishing another team’s suffering. But those are not people who might hit the like button, or subscribe. Virality, it turns out, brings the wrong sort of fame.ParasocialOn the surface, the rewards for watchalong fame are thin. YouTube’s algorithm is weighted toward shorter videos, not hours of broadcast. The platform’s chats, which allow viewers to append payments to their comments or questions, drive only a couple of hundred dollars of revenue.The benefits are largely second-order ones. They are worth doing, Mr. Smith said, because they can drive subscriptions. Mostly, though, they do them because “it would be weird not to: The game is the culmination of everything we talk about.”He and Mr. Mottershead are old hands by the standards of the genre: Stretford Paddock has been doing watchalongs for almost a decade. Most of the newer versions trace their origins to the pandemic, when social distancing rules kept fans from attending games in person.Before then, fan channels focused on giving supporters who could not or did not attend games a digital version of the experience: a taste from outside the stadium, and inside the crowd, before, during and after games.“People want to feel that connection to their clubs,” one watchalong host said, wherever they happen to be watching.Rory Smith/The New York TimesWith the stands empty, that was not possible. All that was left was to offer running commentary on the games that they, like every other fan, were watching on television.When fans returned to the stands, though, the channels noticed there was still a sizable audience craving that type of in-game coverage. “It was so popular that we couldn’t drop it,” Mr. Machin said of The Redmen TV’s experience.Creators of Premier League watchalongs said they all appeal to roughly the same audience, distinguished only by tribal allegiance: fans generally between 16 and 35, though with a substantial proportion who are just a little older. A slender majority live in Britain, but there are healthy constituencies in Ireland, the United States and Australia, as well as whichever country a given team’s stars call home. Tottenham, for example, has a sizable following in South Korea thanks to the club’s beloved captain, Son Heung-min.They are all watching, too, for much the same reason. “People want to feel that connection to their clubs,” Mr. Machin said, wherever they happen to live.Watchalongs create a different sort of bond: a form of what psychologists call a parasocial relationship. Viewers want their biases to be reinforced. They want to know how other, like-minded fans are reacting to the games. But they also want the digressions, the asides about roofing and nightmares and cultural appropriation as it relates to hairstyles.They are, after all, watching from home, all around the world, each of them locked in their own little silo. What they want, more than searing insight or expert analysis or even a cheap laugh, is a connection to people who are doing exactly the same thing.Mr. Mottershead and Mr. Smith are not trying to offer them detailed commentary. They are trying to recreate the feeling, Mr. Mottershead said, of “watching the game with your mates.” More

  • in

    The Premier League Needs a Commissioner

    Allowing clubs to block rule changes and money to delay punishments feeds the perception that the same rules do not apply to everyone.Pete Rozelle’s immediate reaction could not accurately be described as unbridled enthusiasm. He was 33. He had, for the last three years, been the general manager of the Los Angeles Rams. He was suave, charming and well liked. But he was nevertheless starting to wonder whether running an N.F.L. football team was really the job for him.And then, outside the Kenilworth Hotel in Miami in January 1960, he was cornered by a cadre of the league’s most fearsome power brokers: the Mara brothers, Jack and Wellington, owners of the Giants; Dan Reeves, the Rams’ benefactor; and Paul Brown, the coach and founder and all-purpose potentate of the team in Cleveland that still bears his name.They had an offer to make Rozelle. They did not want him to run a franchise. They wanted to put him in charge of the whole league.It was an offer, in Rozelle’s mind, that he had to refuse. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he told them, according to Michael MacCambridge’s magisterial history of the league, “America’s Game.” “That is the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard.”Rozelle’s logic was simple. The job of N.F.L. commissioner looked an awful lot like a poisoned chalice. The league’s various owners were split on almost every issue imaginable — not only on who should be commissioner, but also whether to add another slate of expansion teams, whether to sign a collective television deal and how to stave off the threat of the rival American Football League.There was even contention over where, exactly, the league’s offices should be. Rozelle was not the only one who might have looked at the job description and decided he would have to be a fool, or a madman, to accept.Still, over the course of the afternoon, Rozelle was won over. He was persuaded by Reeves, Brown and the rest that his candidacy would be successful, that the issues could be resolved, that he would “grow into” the position. His wife, Jane, reassured him that he would be a good fit. Later that day, Rozelle was elected as commissioner.The challenges faced by the N.F.L. of the early 1960s are alien to the Premier League of 2023. The Premier League is, by almost any measure, a picture of health. It is the most popular domestic sports league of all time. Television has made it rich beyond measure. It is a playground for billionaires and private equity funds and nation states. It does not fear the emergence of a rival; if anything, its primacy is such that it is asphyxiating its former peers, a wealth gap that isn’t good for the game.This weekend, the Premier League will return after a brief hiatus for international duties with a top-of-the-table meeting between Manchester City and Liverpool, the game that has become its marquee fixture. City is the world’s dominant team. Liverpool is one of soccer’s grandest names. The two teams are packed with global stars and each is led by one of the most influential coaches of their generation. Millions will tune in to watch. If the Premier League is in crisis, it has taken a strange form.And yet, below the surface, the competition is buffeted by currents that Rozelle would recognize. This week, the clubs of the Premier League met in London for one of their periodic conferences. Among other matters, they voted on whether to introduce a ban on — and this is catchy — “related party loans.”In truth, this is hardly an existential matter for the league. (It is far more pressing, and far more problematic, elsewhere.) More and more teams in England, as is the case across Europe, are now part of so-called multiclub networks, in which owners possess not one but a whole stable of teams.The Premier League had, correctly, recognized that this offered teams a chance to circumvent the competition’s extremely lax rules on spending: Nottingham Forest could, say, take a player on loan from its sister club, Olympiacos, at a cheaper rate than it might have to pay on the open market, boosting its performance without affecting its balance sheet.The fact that this is only an issue now, of course, has nothing to do with Forest’s links to Greece or Brighton’s relationship with a team in Belgium but with Newcastle, which is owned by the same Saudi sovereign wealth fund that has spent the last few months stuffing its four domestic teams with superstars. The Premier League wanted to head off the prospect of those players being conveniently diverted to Newcastle at discounted rates.Bernardo Silva and Manchester City will enter Saturday’s showdown against Liverpool with a one-point lead in the Premier League table.Ian Walton/Associated PressBut the motion did not pass. The Premier League’s rules state that, to be approved, any vote requires the support of 14 of its 20 teams. This time, it fell one short. Seven teams decided, essentially, that the idea of related party loans was a good one. It is no surprise that those seven teams either are, or soon might be, part of multiclub systems.It would be naïve, though, to assume that the motives on the other side of the argument were any more pure. It is possible that some of the 13 who did back the idea of a ban did so because they believed the loophole might in some way undermine the integrity of the league, or because they felt there really ought to be rules governing a sporting competition. More likely — as suggested by the timing — they saw a chance to deny their rivals a possible advantage.There is nothing new in this. Several years ago, a number of teams put to the league the idea that they might pool the performance data produced by their games, so as to allow teams to better understand their opponents. Bundesliga of Germany had already adopted a collective approach. A majority of teams rejected it. Such a move would, they said, favor the clubs that had been early adopters of analytics.This is how the Premier League works: as a sort of tyranny of a self-interested majority. And, on the surface, teams confusing what is in their interests with what is in the interests of the league as a whole has done little harm. The league has grown to become a global behemoth. It is probably now Britain’s greatest cultural export.Increasingly, though, that approach appears to be nearing a breaking point. Manchester City has been charged with — though not found guilty of — 115 breaches of the league’s financial regulations. This month, Chelsea brought to its attention huge discrepancies in its books.Everton has vowed to fight a Premier League punishment, but its pockets are not as deep as those of rivals facing the same threat.Peter Powell/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAnd the day before the league’s executives met in London to present craven self-interest as a form of democracy, Everton was stripped of 10 points in the standings for surpassing the maximum loss permitted by the league. (A lesson here: If you tell people that the aim is to lose no money, but that they can lose $130 million without being punished, they will assume that $130 million is not so much a ceiling as a target.)In a 41-page report exploring the Everton case, Paragraph 107 is the key. Part of the evidence submitted by Everton, it says, came from a representative of the club who explained that his job was not to make sure that it met the league’s financial requirements, but to “protect and interpret” those requirements “to the benefit” of his employer.“The Commission notes that the Premier League already needs to devote considerable resources to monitoring compliance by its member clubs,” the report adds. “If all clubs were to adopt a similar approach, the Premier League’s task would become yet more challenging.”That should not be the case, of course. The teams of the Premier League should understand that for a sporting competition to have any validity, any meaning, it needs to have an agreed-upon set of rules. But what Everton, Chelsea and Manchester City prove — like the vote on related party loans — is that the clubs do not want to engage with those rules in good faith. They see them instead as rules to be manipulated and circumvented and sometimes ignored, and view doing so as all part of the game.Whether that does any actual damage is difficult to say. The allegations against Manchester City have done little to dampen enthusiasm for the league, just as the sight of Newcastle reaching the Champions League with Neymar and Cristiano Ronaldo — on loan — would hardly drive fans away.There comes a point, though, when a fracture happens. Perhaps that is between the clubs, so ensconced in their own universes that they can no longer agree on anything. Or perhaps that is between the teams and the fans, once the asterisks start to pile up in previous seasons and nobody is sure whether what they are watching will actually count.There are two ways of averting that. One, rather utopian, is to persuade the clubs to work more collectively, to understand that growth is a shared endeavor and that their success is codependent. The other is to create an office, one with genuine power, to enforce the rules (ideally in real time), to issue punishments and to protect the interests of the league.On several occasions in the 1990s, the Premier League sent emissaries to the United States to see what English soccer could learn from America’s major leagues. They came back with an awareness of the power of television, an understanding of the significance of corporate revenue, and a surprisingly longstanding conviction that cheerleaders would be a good idea in a Yorkshire winter.Nobody, it seems, recommended instituting a commissioner to shape and guide their business. Given where the Premier League finds itself now, caught in an impasse between irreconcilable camps, it is apparent that is something of an omission. If the clubs cannot willingly work together, cannot operate for their own wider benefit, then it is obvious they have to be made to do so.The only problem, of course, is the obvious one. The clubs themselves would have to vote on not only the identity of the commissioner, but also the existence of one. As ever, they would do so entirely along the lines of their own self-interests. In that case, and in that case alone, though, they might just find an unfamiliar unanimity.A (Disputed) Vision of the FutureCristiano Ronaldo is confirmed for Saudi Arabia in February. Lionel Messi and Inter Miami? Not so much.Ahmed Yosri/ReutersIt is not absolutely clear, at this precise moment, if Inter Miami will be taking part in the tournament that everyone is talking about: the eternally prestigious Riyadh Season Cup.On Tuesday, Turki al-Sheikh, the chairman of the General Entertainment Authority in Saudi Arabia, was under the distinct impression that he had booked the world’s finest Barcelona tribute act to be part of a three-team tournament featuring Miami’s fellow “giants” — his words, not anyone else’s — Al-Nassr and Al-Hilal.A few hours later, sadly, it became clear that nobody had told Inter Miami. “Earlier today, an announcement was issued stating that Inter Miami is scheduled to play in the Riyadh Season Cup,” the club said in a statement that is, by any standards, a classic of the genre. “This is inaccurate.”It seems a fair bet to assume that this all ends with Inter Miami pitching up in Saudi Arabia in a few months anyway, and that the dispute was rather more about who was allowed to announce the news, and when, than it was about the actual content of it. Still, even if the whole thing does not materialize, it is hard to escape the impression that the episode offers a fleeting glimpse of soccer’s future.The appeal of bringing Miami to town, of course, is the prospect of bringing Lionel Messi and Ronaldo into direct competition again. It would be, as the now-disputed news release had it, a “Last Dance” sort of occasion, an assertion undercut only a little by the fact that: one, the actual “Last Dance” — the documentary series — is about a meaningful championship, not a friendly match; and two, there is every chance that either the Saudi authorities or M.L.S. will find a way to have them play each other again at the next available opportunity.Still, such quibbling is probably futile at this point. Inter Miami against Al-Nassr in Riyadh, in February, is not even a remote imitation of the sorts of games that defined the rivalry between Messi and Ronaldo. It is instead an exhibition, a staged production, more than a sporting contest. It is soccer as brought to you by W.W.E.But it is also, needless to say, what people want. Fans will buy tickets to see Messi and Ronaldo face-to-face once more. Broadcasters will pay — perhaps not much, but still — to show the game. People will tune in, idly, reluctantly, with half an eye on something else. And as they do, soccer will take another step on the road to becoming something further from sport and closer to what might best be described as “general entertainment.”CorrespondenceLast week’s newsletter touched, fleetingly, on Sweden, the only major men’s league in Europe that continues virgin and unsullied by the arrival of V.A.R. That means, of course, that Sweden is also blissfully ignorant of the infinite debate about V.A.R. that occurs every time anyone mentions V.A.R.(It seems now that soccer is essentially a year-round conversation about how much of our agency we should surrender to technology broken only by two breaks in which we talk about the acquisition of players. Perhaps, in years to come, we will finally do away with the actual sport entirely so as to concentrate exclusively on the bits we really like.)In honor of the Swedish approach, then, I am going to set aside the many emails about V.A.R. that arrived in the inbox this week and focus instead on three questions that are perhaps less pressing but almost certainly more original.“Why are Wolverhampton Wanderers referred to as Wolves by match commentators?” Rick Smith asked. “I can’t think of any other team regularly referred to by its nickname. The only thing I can think of is, way back in the days of print media, some editor or typesetter said Wolverhampton had too many letters to fit in a headline.”My sense here is that Rick’s assertion is essentially correct, though I can think of a few examples that come pretty close. The best is the Scottish team Heart of Midlothian, which is referred to almost exclusively as Hearts. It is increasingly common to see “Spurs” in a league table rather than “Tottenham Hotspur.” In all of these cases, I suspect the basic cause is the desire to abbreviate, both from the fans and the news media.Question No. 2 comes from Ted Richards. “With the margins in performance at the top level becoming smaller and smaller, and the improvements in data collecting and tracking, has there been any movement, at the club level, to preferring international players closer to home?” he asked. “Might a club prefer a Mudryk over a Martinelli, knowing international duty would not require hours in the air while crossing many time zones?”The short answer to this is yes. Clubs do factor international commitments into signing players — particularly in the context of African stars likely to be called up for the midseason Cup of Nations — but it is ordinarily only one factor to be weighed, rather than an outright red flag.And finally, Bob Bonpietro has hit upon another subject on which I already have thoughts. “After seeing France beat Gibraltar, 14-0,” he wrote, “isn’t it time UEFA reconsider its qualifying format for the European Championship? These types of games usually end in routs. Why not do something akin to Concacaf to winnow out the minnows?”Kylian Mbappé, Olivier Giroud and Ousmane Dembélé combined to score six of France’s 14 goals against Gibraltar.Valery Hache/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe argument has always been that the smaller nations improve only by being exposed to the standard to which they aspire, and it is one with some evidence in its favor. Luxembourg, for example, traditionally one of Europe’s great walkovers, finished third in its qualifying group this time around. Albania, historically only a rung above, has now qualified for two of the last three Euros.All of that notwithstanding, the idea of holding some sort of prequalifying tournament does have some merit. Inviting the 16 “weakest” teams — decided by ranking, perhaps, or performance in the last round of qualification — to play off for a limited number of places in qualifying proper would allow those countries to play more meaningful games; would create a more attractive qualifying tournament; and would not stop the momentum of the upwardly mobile. More

  • in

    Xabi Alonso Isn’t Coming to Save Your Team. Not Yet.

    The patience of Alonso, the Bayer Leverkusen manager, says a lot about him, and just as much about a sport perpetually chasing the next big thing.Xabi Alonso has always done things at his own speed. As a player, it was his coolness, his control, his capacity to wait until precisely the right moment that made him one of the finest midfielders of his generation. As he contemplated the idea of becoming a coach, he saw no reason to change. He would continue to treat patience as a virtue.He did not start out on the second phase of his career with a five-year or a 10-year plan in mind. All he knew was that he was not in a rush. “I had an idea that I did not want to go too quickly,” he said. “But I had not really mapped anything out.”There were plenty of people who were more than happy to do it for him. Everything about Alonso seemed to indicate not only that he would go into management when his playing days drew to a close, but almost that he should. He had, after all, had the perfect education. He was as near to a sure thing as it was possible to imagine.He had played for some of the most garlanded clubs in Europe. He was one of the most decorated players of his generation, having won the Champions League with Liverpool and Real Madrid, domestic titles with Madrid and Bayern Munich, the World Cup and a couple of European Championships with Spain.He had learned at the knee of pretty much every member of modern coaching’s pantheon: Rafael Benítez at Liverpool; José Mourinho, Carlo Ancelotti and Zinedine Zidane at Real Madrid; Pep Guardiola and Ancelotti again at Bayern Munich. (Even then, he admitted that there is one notable absence from that list: Alonso would have “loved” to have been coached by Jürgen Klopp.)And, just as important, he had been a keen and gifted student. It was only in the last few years of his career, in Madrid and Munich, that Alonso actively sought to learn what it took to be a manager: He made a point of peppering Ancelotti’s and Guardiola’s staff members with questions, trying to arm himself with as much knowledge as possible. “I tried to be curious about the manager’s work,” he said.He had, though, always been more cerebral than most of his peers, an avid reader off the field and an expert interpreter of the game on it, blessed with such foresight that it sometimes appeared as if he was playing in real time and everyone else was on satellite delay. His coaches, modern soccer’s most revered minds, regarded him as their brains on the field.From the moment he retired, then, Alonso could probably have walked into any job he wanted. He could have fast-tracked his coaching qualifications, started doing a bit of judicious punditry work, called in a few favors, and been in charge of an underperforming Champions League team almost before the year was out. That, though, is not Alonso’s style.And so, instead, he took a sabbatical, and then set about earning his spurs. He spent three years back home in San Sebastián, working in the youth academy at Real Sociedad, his first club, the one he supported, the place where his father had worked. He did not conduct a series of regular interviews to ensure people knew about all of his achievements. As far as it is possible for someone of his renown, Alonso stepped into the shadows.Reasonably frequently, someone would try to coax him into the light: from Spain, from Germany, from England. “I had other possibilities,” he said, diplomatically, in an interview this week. “But I didn’t see them that clearly. I didn’t want to go somewhere I was not convinced.” He wanted to wait for just the right time, just the right place. A year ago, when Bayer Leverkusen approached him, he had a sense that it might have arrived.“I had the feeling that I had taken the right steps,” he said. It felt like a risk, of course, but he was ready. “It was the moment that either I tried, or I stayed at home. Maybe that would have been an easier life. It would have been more relaxed than right now.”Alonso’s quick success as Leverkusen manager already has bigger clubs circling.Ronald Wittek/EPA, via ShutterstockLeverkusen seemed a good match, though, the sort of club where expectations are high, but not unrealistic, and the pressure intense, rather than overbearing. It was a team with a good squad with ample room for improvement, a clear structure, a coherent vision of itself. “I had the feeling that everyone was pushing in the same direction,” he said. “That’s helpful. I had the feeling it was the right time and the right place.” He took the job.It was at that point that Alonso’s plan to take things slowly started to fall apart. Leverkusen had been toiling at the foot of the Bundesliga when he arrived. But by the end of his first season, he had managed to steer the club back into the Europa League.The job would soon get harder. Over the summer, Leverkusen sold Mousa Diaby, an electric French winger who had become the team’s most coveted asset. And yet, after 11 games of the new Bundesliga season, Alonso’s team has not lost a game. Leverkusen is top of the table in Germany, two points ahead of Bayern Munich. It has scored 34 goals. The only game it has not won was a 2-2 draw away at Bayern.All of which means the 41-year-old Alonso has overseen the best start to a Bundesliga season any team has ever made, outstripping even the imperious, Guardiola-era Bayern side in which he was a central figure.He now has to spend rather more time than he might like offering deadpan answers to questions about whether his team can lift the championship. (Predictably, he thinks it is too early to contemplate such a prospect; ask him again in April, he said).Alonso, it turns out, seems to be exactly as good at management as everyone assumed he would be. That does not mean he has changed his approach. He is still not in a rush. The problem is that the same cannot be said of the sport. Alonso always stood out because of his patience, because he possessed what the industry lacked.Barely a year into his senior management career, Alonso is already the favorite to replace Ancelotti at Real Madrid, and a contender to fill any vacancy that might arise at both Bayern Munich and Liverpool. “Maybe I could do all three,” Alonso said. “With Zoom.”He was joking, of course. He has been around long enough to know that he had to clarify that his “mind is 100 percent” at Leverkusen. It is much too soon, as far as he is concerned, to discuss where he might go next. According to his timeline, he is just starting out. “I don’t like to talk about my coaching with a lot of authority,” he said. “I don’t feel I have that authority. I’m so early.”He is young enough that he still joins in games in training — he smiled just a touch awkwardly and briefly blushed when asked if he is the best passer of the ball at the club, a physical reaction that translates roughly as “yes” — and he still cannot quite resist the lure of continually rolling a ball under his feet, caressing it, during training sessions.The withdrawal pangs from his playing days remain. “Playing is better,” he said. “Playing is much better. I shouldn’t say it but I do miss it.” As he is watching games unfold, he said, he catches himself quite often contemplating how much more fun it would be out on the field, putting a plan into action, rather than instructing others to do it.Not far removed from his playing days, Alonso might still be Leverkusen’s best passer.Federico Gambarini/DPA, via Associated PressThat is not to say he does not find management satisfying. Given his influences — in particular that great, all-conquering Spanish team and Guardiola, whom he considers a friend as much as a former manager — it is no surprise he has a clear “idea” of how he wants his team to play: a fusion of Spanish control and German intensity, all percolated through the “intuition” of his players.“They are the most important guys,” he said. When identifying potential recruits this summer, the key characteristic was not familiarity with a particular style but “intelligence,” the ability to shift between them, to make their own decisions, solve their own problems.“It is not about being robots,” Alonso said. “They have the knowledge to know what might happen, and then decide what is good with their qualities.”But management, he has discovered, is built not on grand ideas but of small gestures, too, less a matter of philosophy than personal relationships. He has had to learn “how to be a leader in certain circumstances: when to push, when to be a little softer, when not to let them relax.”Ancelotti, in particular, provided him with a clear example of how to do that, but Alonso knows he is not there yet. He is still forging into uncharted territory, for him. He needs to persuade his players to be more consistent, he said, not to drop the level they have set, not to allow their bright start to flicker and fade.He has never done that before. He is still learning, after all. He knows that will take time. He knows, too, that he has it. Soccer might be hard-wired to ask, almost immediately, what comes next. Alonso’s start has been quicker than even he might have imagined. That has brought opportunity, but it has also brought a challenge, too. He has to figure out how he can continue to take things slow.Simpler TimesAmong the many unique and heartening features of Sweden’s elite league, the Allsvenskan — and I will have much more to say on the competition and its thrilling final title race in the coming days — it is also the only major league in Europe happy to discover what happens if you just decide not to have video assistant referees.At the behest of its empowered fans, Sweden, and Sweden alone, has elected not to introduce V.A.R. Given the system’s performance elsewhere in Europe this year, it looks increasingly like a wise decision.In Sweden, the referee still has the final word.Betina Garcia for The New York TimesFor someone now accustomed to relying on remote confirmation of any and every incident on the field, though, it makes watching a game a slightly disorientating experience. The game on Sunday was settled by a penalty, the sort that might have been pored over for several minutes in the Premier League. Instead, the referee awarded it, the crowd cheered, and Isaac Kiese Thelin stepped up to take it.There was no second-guessing. There was no interminable delay. The decision was made, and it stood. It was the same when Elfsborg made two (from a distance, not impossible) claims for a handball in the dying moments, just before Malmo’s victory secured its latest Swedish championship. The referee waved both away, decisively; nobody had to hold their breath, to wait for V.A.R. to have its say.It was curious to note, too, that the protests from the aggrieved players were significantly less intense than they have become in the Premier League. Some objected, of course, and some pleaded their cases, but there was a recognizable absence of the sort of rage that can only ever be rooted in impotence. It is almost as if, by granting referees absolute agency rather than robbing it from them, Sweden has increased their authority, not diminished their status.CorrespondenceThis newsletter — particularly this section of this newsletter — is never afraid to duck the big issues of the day. I feel like we proved that beyond doubt with our discourse on where you can find the best ice cream, and the subsequent conversation around whether a soccer newsletter should concern itself with where you can find the best ice cream.Liz Honore’s question, then, might look fiendishly complex — a labyrinth of obstacles and booby-traps — but with clear eyes and a strong heart, it can be confronted head on. “Do you think, given Emma Hayes’s no-nonsense coaching style,” Liz asked, “she would have kept Megan Rapinoe on her World Cup squad, given her increased focus on nonsoccer-related issues?”In one sense, the answer to this is quite easy. Hayes does have a no-nonsense coaching style, that is true. But she has also worked with any number of players who have, admirably, taken it on themselves to bring issues close to their hearts into the public domain. So, no, I don’t think she would have disapproved of Rapinoe’s interests away from the game.The controversial bit is this addendum, which I may regret. I do not believe Rapinoe’s form dipped because of her advocacy work. I do, though, believe that Rapinoe’s form dipped, and I believe it is possible she was included in the squad to some extent because she was, in effect, too famous to omit. Whether Hayes would have done the same in that situation, I don’t know.Megan Rapinoe: too big to fail?Orlando Ramirez/Usa Today Sports, via Reuters ConJoel Dvoskin follows that up with a series of questions related to the Jim Harbaugh scandal, which I will admit right now is the sort of cheating that does not really seem like cheating to Europeans. Why wouldn’t he steal other people’s signs? Why would you have a rule about watching your opponents in advance?Joel’s two best queries — “Is cheating only a sin if it works?” and, “If everybody is breaking a rule, why is it still a rule?” — are worth bearing in mind as we discuss the parallel he drew with soccer.“People cheat in soccer all the time, but it seems to happen in a the context of a tacit agreement about the guard rails,” Joel wrote, correctly. “Eventually, the Premier League will find itself in as dicey a situation as faces the Big Ten today. In a sport with such intense competition, it is only a matter of time before someone decides to take ‘rules were made to be broken’ and ‘if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying’ to a previously unimaginable extreme.”It is entirely possible that soccer has already arrived at this moment. This week, Chelsea was accused of historic financial chicanery, and Manchester City, still facing 115 charges of similar offenses from the Premier League, announced eye-watering record revenues.Both would rather suggest that cheating is only a sin if it doesn’t work. More important, if the Premier League is unwilling or unable to punish both Chelsea and City appropriately — and the only logical sporting punishment is retrospective points deductions for the seasons in which the offenses were committed — then the league will have no choice but to ask if there is any point in having rules on spending at all. More

  • in

    Luis Díaz’s Kidnapped Father Is Freed in Colombia

    Luis Manuel Díaz was abducted 12 days ago by a guerrilla group called the National Liberation Army.The father of Luis Díaz, a Colombian soccer star for the English club Liverpool, was freed on Thursday after he was kidnapped by a guerrilla group, Colombian officials said.“We report with joy the release of Don Luis Manuel Díaz,” the Colombian government’s commission for peace talks said in a statement on Thursday morning. “We hope that he will soon regain his tranquillity, disturbed by an act that should never have happened.”It was not immediately clear what was exchanged, if anything, for the elder Mr. Díaz’s freedom.Both of Mr. Díaz’s parents were kidnapped on Oct. 28 by armed men from a gas station in their hometown, Barrancas, Colombia. His mother, Cilenis Marulanda, was rescued hours later, but her husband, Luis Manuel Díaz, remained captive.The Colombian national police and the military mobilized to find Mr. Díaz amid fears that the kidnappers might have taken him from Barrancas, which is in La Guajira, a region of northern Colombian, across the border to Venezuela.Five days later, the National Liberation Army, a guerrilla group, took responsibility for the kidnapping. The outfit, known as the E.L.N., is the largest remaining rebel group in Colombia’s 60-year internal conflict and operates in the countryside.In an announcement published by local news outlets, José Manuel Martínez Quiroz, who was identified as the commander of the northern front of the E.L.N., said the group had commands with “economic missions and one of them” took the elder Mr. Díaz, who is known as Mane. But it said he would be freed because he was the family member of “a great athlete whom all Colombians love.”Although kidnappings for ransom and extortion in Colombia have resurged in recent years after a lull, E.L.N.’s initial statement did not make any demands in exchange for the release of Mr. Díaz.Three days later, the E.L.N. blamed the Colombian military for the delay. In a statement, the group said on Sunday that it was trying to avoid incidents with the Colombian authorities but that the area remained militarized with flyovers and arriving troops. The situation, it said, “does not allow the execution of the liberation plan quickly and safely.” The following day, the military announced that it was withdrawing from the region where Mr. Díaz, who local news reports say is 56, was believed to be held. But when he had still not been freed by Tuesday, Otty Patiño, Colombia’s chief negotiator in peace talks with the E.L.N., told reporters that there was “no excuse” for the delay. He said the guerrilla group had been in contact with the United Nations and Roman Catholic Church.The kidnapping captured the attention of a country of nearly 52 million not just because soccer is the most popular sport there, but also because it stoked concerns about increasing insecurity and whether the government was doing enough to stop it. In public pleas and in marches in Mr. Díaz’s hometown, Colombians called for his father’s release.The Colombian government, under President Gustavo Petro, had been negotiating a peace treaty with the E.L.N., and a six-month cease-fire was to begin in August. But after the elder Mr. Díaz was kidnapped, Mr. Petro said that the E.L.N. had committed an act that “goes against the very peace process.”The E.L.N.’s top commander, Eliécer Herlinto Chamorro, known by his nom de guerre, Antonio García, said in a statement, according to local reports, that the elder Mr. Díaz’s kidnapping had been “an error” and called his son, 26, a symbol for Colombia.The younger Mr. Díaz, who is known as Lucho, has shone for his country’s national team. He rose from playing for his local Indigenous team to larger clubs in Colombia, eventually landing at Liverpool with a contract worth more than a reported $60 million. Mr. Díaz’s father was a gifted amateur player in Barrancas and trained his son. The Liverpool player sat out the first game after his father’s kidnapping but returned to action on Sunday. After scoring a late game-tying goal in a 1-1 draw against Luton, he pulled up his jersey to reveal an undershirt that read, “Freedom for Papa” in Spanish.After the game, he pleaded for his father’s release.“Every second, every minute, our distress grows,” he wrote in a statement. “My mother, my brothers and I are desperate, anguished and without words to describe what we’re feeling. This suffering will only end when we have him back home.” More

  • in

    Colombia Troops Search for Liverpool Star Luis Diaz’s Kidnapped Father

    The parents of Luis Díaz, a Colombian star of the English club, were both kidnapped on Saturday. His mother was rescued hours later, but his father remains missing.The authorities in Colombia have mobilized the national police and the military to look for the father of the soccer star Luis Díaz, a Colombian standout for the English club Liverpool whose parents were kidnapped in his hometown on Saturday. Given soccer’s popularity here, the incident captured the South American country’s attention, but it also stoked fears of increasing insecurity in a nation where such kidnappings were becoming less common until a surge in recent years.Mr. Díaz’s mother, Cilenis Marulanda, was rescued hours after she was abducted, President Gustavo Petro of Colombia said on Saturday night. The Colombian national police, the military and a unit that specializes in kidnapping dispatched officers, soldiers, cars and aircraft to find his father, Luis Manuel Díaz.The parents of Mr. Díaz, who is known as Lucho, had been in a car at a gas station in Barrancas — a town in La Guajira, a region of northern Colombia along the Caribbean Sea and bordering Venezuela — when they were kidnapped by armed men on Saturday afternoon, according to local reports and the authorities.The Colombian authorities on Sunday morning announced a reward of 200 million pesos (roughly $48,000) for any information that would help locate the elder Mr. Díaz.They said they were in a rush to find him because they feared that he might be taken to neighboring Venezuela, a country marred by years of political, economic and social unrest. Luis Fernando Velasco, the Colombian minister of the interior, told reporters on Sunday that the authorities were trying to block the suspects’ path to Venezuela because their traveling there was “one hypothesis” they were operating under.“It’s not the only one, to cover all sides,” he continued. “But we’re doing a gigantic operation, and I ask all people in La Guajira that might be in the area to help us and turn in all the information that they can. What they’ve done with Lucho Díaz is not just to Lucho Díaz but to all of Colombia, and all of Colombia needs to react.”While details of Ms. Marulanda’s rescue were not immediately known, she was safe as of Saturday night, William René Salamanca, the head of the Colombian national police, said. In a video posted on Saturday night on X, formerly known as Twitter, Mr. Salamanca spoke briefly on the phone with Ms. Marulanda.Diogo Jota, a Liverpool player, held up Luis Díaz’s jersey as he celebrated scoring a goal during a home match against Nottingham Forest at the club’s stadium on Sunday.Scott Heppell/ReutersIn another video, posted by Mr. Salamanca on Sunday morning, he spoke on the phone with the younger Mr. Díaz via the Colombian ambassador to the United Kingdom, Roy Barreras. Mr. Salamanca told Mr. Díaz, 26, that the Colombian authorities were sparing no effort in trying to find his father and that the situation had moved the country. He also told Mr. Díaz that he was already in La Guajira and was headed to his hometown soon to help lead the operation.Mr. Díaz is reportedly earning more than $3 million a year, and thus may have been a target for extortion, said Sergio Guzmán, the director of Colombia Risk Analysis, a political risk consultancy, based in the Colombian capital, Bogotá.“I’m presuming it’s an extortion kidnapping, which wouldn’t necessarily be out of the norm, because Luis Díaz is not politically connected or an important player politically, and neither are his parents,” Mr. Guzmán said. “But his notoriety, his rise to fame and perceived wealth could be more for that kind of hostage taking.”Although kidnappings have dropped dramatically since Colombia’s peace treaty with rebels in 2016, Mr. Guzmán said the practice had surged over the past two years. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, used extortion kidnapping to fund their operations. But in recent years, Mr. Guzmán said, other criminal groups have been battling for territory previously held by the demobilized FARC, and thus more extortions, kidnappings and ransoms have been happening.“I think it feeds into the existing pessimism about the country’s security situation,” Mr. Guzmán said of the kidnapping of Mr. Díaz’s parents. He also noted that Colombians were voting on Sunday in regional elections. “If you look at the latest polls, the majority of Colombians feel dissatisfied with the overall direction of the country, but also citizens feel less safe than they have previously,” he said.Mr. Díaz rose from playing for his local Indigenous team to larger clubs in Colombia before eventually landing in Europe and then last year at Liverpool.Daniel Munoz/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSoccer is the most popular sport in the country of nearly 52 million, and Mr. Díaz has shined for his country’s national team, winning the Golden Boot award, alongside the Argentine superstar Lionel Messi, for being the top scorer during the 2021 Copa América tournament.Mr. Díaz’s father was a gifted amateur player in Barrancas and trained his son. Mr. Díaz, who is of Wayúu descent and comes from an area often overlooked for soccer talent, rose from playing for his local Indigenous team to larger clubs in Colombia before eventually landing in Europe and then last year at Liverpool, one of the biggest clubs in the world, in the Premier League in England.Mr. Díaz, who has scored twice in nine appearances for Liverpool this season, was not in the lineup on Sunday against Nottingham Forest after a last-minute change by Liverpool’s manager, Jürgen Klopp. Mr. Klopp told reporters on Sunday that what was happening to Mr. Díaz and his family was “a worrying situation for all of us and it was a pretty tough night.”After the Liverpool player Diogo Jota scored during Sunday’s 3-0 win, he ran to the sideline and held up Mr. Díaz’s jersey.“It is our fervent hope that the matter is resolved safely and at the earliest possible opportunity,” Liverpool said in a statement on Sunday morning. “In the meantime, the player’s welfare will continue to be our immediate priority.” More

  • in

    Can This Man Make Soccer Smarter?

    Ian Graham helped transform Liverpool from a faded giant into soccer’s most cutting-edge club. Now he wants to do the same for everyone else.Ian Graham does not make for an especially likely revolutionary. He has a distinctly academic air: genial, whip-smart, just a touch crumpled. He is not a natural salesman. He does not particularly enjoy giving interviews. Roughly once every 10 minutes, he allows a mischievous, outré sense of humor to get the better of him. He feels this makes appearing on any broadcast medium something of a risk.It is hard to deny, though, that he is a resoundingly successful insurgent. Twenty years ago, he was among the first to explore the idea that soccer might be able to understand itself better by examining the vast reams of data produced by every single player in every single game. He did not so much pioneer the field of soccer analytics as help to conjure it into existence.Then, over the course of a decade at Liverpool, he acted as proof of concept. From scratch, he built a data department that came to be regarded as one of the most sophisticated in the sport. His systems, his methods and his insights turned a club that had long been a drifting, fading giant into a beacon of innovation.There are two ways to gauge his influence. The simplest is soccer’s default: the weighing of silver and gold. In his time at Liverpool, the club was crowned champion of England — for the first time in 30 years — Europe and the world. It made the Champions League final, the sport’s biggest game, three times in five seasons.But a better measure, perhaps, is the wake he left rather than the trail he blazed. When he joined Liverpool in 2012, the fact that an elite team might employ an actual scientist — he holds a doctorate in polymer physics, but deploys his honorific only as a joke — was seen as either outlandish or absurd.Soccer had long been resistant to outsiders, those who had not established their bona fides within the sport as players or coaches. Insiders regarded academics with particular contempt. The sport still viewed itself as too dynamic, too fluid, too poetic to be reduced to the mundanity of numbers. The idea of a data department was still something of a novelty in itself.Liverpool’s victory parade after it won the Champions League in 2019. Oli Scarff/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBy the time Graham left Liverpool earlier this year, however, it was closer to a necessity. It is widely accepted that any club serious about competing in the continent’s major leagues should consult data when signing new players and assessing performances.Almost every major team in Europe has a data department, increasingly including someone with a scientific background. Graham would be forgiven, perhaps, for thinking that the revolution he helped to instigate was complete. As far as he is concerned, though, it has barely begun.GravityThere are, in Graham’s mind, two reasons that soccer is more complex than theoretical physics. The first is that “hard science” — his term — has the benefit of being bound by a set of unassailable rules. The laws of physics are nonnegotiable. Particles behave in predictable ways. That is not the case in soccer. “In physics, you do not have to take into account that gravity works slightly differently in Germany,” he said.The second is that elite sports do not provide the “huge luxury” of controlled experimentation. European soccer does not operate in sterile laboratory conditions. There is no opportunity to formulate, test and modify a hypothesis. “It’s very emotional, very reactive,” Graham said. Fans and executives alike demand instant gratification.The long-term future extends, at most, six weeks or so. To Christmas at the latest. The one thing nobody in soccer has, as a rule, is time.He attributes much of his success at Liverpool to the fact that he did. This was, he said, the key ingredient in the “special sauce” the club developed. “The first thing I said to the owners was that they shouldn’t expect to hear from me for six months,” he said. “That’s how long it would take to build all the structures we needed. Every time there was something more pressing, we were able to hire someone else to do it.”That few — if any — other teams have that privilege limits soccer’s ability to make the most of the great advances made in analytics in recent years. Even Brighton and Brentford, the two English clubs that now function as Liverpool’s heirs at the cutting edge, with their fairy-tale ascensions to the Premier League powered by data, must keep pace with a field evolving at breakneck speed.Brighton and Brentford have used their own data-driven improvements to punch above their weight in the Premier League.Justin Setterfield/Getty Images“If you look at what people are doing outside the sport, people who have the time to try things out, it’s often a lot more advanced,” Graham said. “The tools available, the technology, the data are all a lot better now. If you were to start building a system today, you’d have a much higher baseline. Inside a club, you have to stop developing at a certain level. There’s so much day-to-day work that there’s no time for research.”That is not the only limiting factor. Clubs operate in distinct silos: The work they do on data is largely proprietary. That teams should not share knowledge or disseminate best practices makes perfect sense on a sporting level. But not only is it antithetical on a scientific one, it serves to diminish the scale of data’s potential impact.Teams that did not have the foresight to be early adopters are, Graham estimates, “10 years behind” the likes of Liverpool, Brighton and Brentford today. Those who had the appetite but not the resources are locked out, too. “The teams who could benefit the most from it often can’t afford to do it, or at least do it properly,” he said.It has been almost a year, now, since the 45-year-old informed Liverpool that his role there had reached “a natural end.” Working for the club he had supported as a child was his “dream job,” he said, but he felt as if he had achieved all that he could. He knew that, at least in a professional environment, he would not be able to start from scratch again.When the news of his impending departure got out, he quickly received a flurry of offers from other teams, all hoping he could do for them what he had done for Liverpool. Graham did not find the prospect appealing. The systems he had designed for Liverpool were now the club’s intellectual property; he did not particularly want to build something for someone else. “I felt like I’d done it,” he said. “It would have been crazy to work for just one club again.”Instead, he set his sights on helping soccer as a whole to become just a little bit smarter.Known UnknownsOver the past couple of months, Graham has met with a succession of owners, and prospective owners, of soccer teams. They are — largely, though not exclusively — extremely wealthy Americans, often executives from private equity and venture capital firms, all of them keen to acquire the services of Ludonautics, the firm he established after leaving Liverpool, for the clubs they have bought or the clubs they hope to buy.The appeal is obvious. In a sport chronically lacking in time, Ludonautics has the feel of a shortcut. Graham’s résumé is compelling. So, too, is that of Michael Edwards, the feted, publicity-averse sporting director who worked with him at Liverpool and who is now engaged by the company as a “sporting consultant.”A year after it won the Champions League, Liverpool claimed its first English championship in 30 years.Oli Scarff/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe pitch, though, is not that they can repeat the success they had at Liverpool; it is that they can expand upon it. Graham no longer has to work according to the strictures and demands of an individual team. He can, instead, use the full gamut of modern technology at his disposal to build something new, something better, and to drive the sport’s next great leap forward.In time, he said, that may even allow him to attain what he regards as the “holy grail” of analytics: assessing the actual significance of a manager. “That’s very complicated,” he said. “It tends to be conflated with who has the best players, the best team. There are a lot of second-order effects. It’s very hard to know exactly how good any manager is, and what sort of impact they have on results.”What has struck him most in his recent meetings is how little soccer still knows about itself. It is not just that complex things — how much of a team’s performance can be attributed to luck, how much it is spending for each point it has acquired — remain a mystery. The simplest building blocks often do, too.Most pressing is that, in many cases, teams do not know what should be regarded as success. Ludonautics has seen sale prospectuses for teams in which the values of the squads are little more than finger-in-the-air estimates. That, Graham said, represents more than just a little sales sleight of hand; it has a tangible and detrimental effect.“In terms of performance, they often do not have a systematic way of knowing who they are and where they are,” he said. “They do not have a sense of the underlying strength of the team. Without that, how do you know where you should be finishing? How do you know if coming fifth is good or bad? And how do you hold people accountable?”As far as he is concerned, that is in the sport’s interest as a whole: The more teams that know the simple things as well as the complex ones, the better the sport becomes. “There’s a quote from John Keats about Isaac Newton using the prism to explain the colors of a rainbow,” Graham said. “But knowing why it happens doesn’t make a rainbow any less beautiful.” More